Fire and Ice

In case you are living under a rock (or not in Provo or Mormondom), the Provo Tabernacle burnt down this morning. I didn't hear about it till 10 am and so didn't really get many dramatic shots. I did stick around for several hours tho and managed to get a few decent shots.

First off, here is one that a fireman took for me. He told me about a painting of Christ hanging just inside the front door that was so far untouched by the flames. I couldn't get it from where I was (even though I was well inside the police tape thanks to some aerial photogs I was helping out... more on them later), so the fireman (didn't catch his name.. sorry!) took my camera up onto the firetruck a ways and was able to take some brackets for me. Here is the result.

Deseret News is going to run this photo someplace, not sure if it will be in print or only online.. But either way that is fun.

Here are some shots of the same doorway that are zoomed out so you can see where the painting was--surrounded by burnt and burning rubble. Pretty amazing..

This first one... ahem... may or may not be slightly (and poorly...) photoshopped to show whats behind the dark smoke. but that is the same door and the same place, only it was too smoky when the wide shot was taken to really see inside. (plus some other stuff fell down in the meantime). I may try to make a better composite of those two images later.

Here is a shot that I got that I am pretty proud of. Totally a fluke on the timing, but hey, life's a fluke sometimes...



Everything else is presented pretty much in the order I shot it. It was really interesting to see all the fire surrounded by ice from the firetruck water. Made for some really interesting contrast.

It is super sad to see this amazing historic building burn. They don't know what started the fire, but there was a ton of stuff in the building when it went down, as BYU-Broadcasting had been filming a concert and other things there. Probably close to a million dollars in camera and lighting equipment, a $200,000+ grande piano, an antique harp, full percussion kit and lots of other stuff, not to mention all the priceless original artwork, the pipe organ, and everything else. This is a sad day.